and the university of nottingham

Monthly Archives: January 2012

Today was Hazel Glover’s (official) retirement from the lab. She’s been here eleven years – essentially as long as the lab. It’ll be interesting to see how long it is before some problem comes along and, without her steady hand to solve it, shatters the glorious peace in which we’ve been living. Sam Stapleford, who organised the cupcakes reminded us all of Hazel’s word she coined to describe the organisational structure of the lab during this year’s MRL away day – “adhocracy” This to me is not only a fantastically appropriate description, but also sums up one of the main reasons I enjoy working in the MRL so much. It is self-organising, at least in some respects and lacks a lot of process. It’s essentially organised in a similar way to my brain. Certain parts of it are beaten into shape where necessary, but for the most part despite being all over the place it bumbles along and sometimes has great ideas.

Byron once said “Out of chaos god made the world” That may be (though probably isn’t) true, but yesterday out of chaos I made a sandwich and it was delicious.